Abstract: In April 1786, John Adams and Thomas Jefferson traveled from London to Stratford-upon-Avon to see where William Shakespeare was born. The two friends and future American presidents were in England to hammer out a set of commercial treatises. When the negotiations briefly stalled, they decided to go sightseeing, taking in mainly country estates and gardens but also relishing a few historical sites, most notably, the battlefield at Worcester where Oliver Cromwell had defeated King Charles II. Adams deemed it “holy Ground.” 1In Stratford, though, Adams was disappointed. The town, he felt, had preserved so little from Shakespeare’s time and nothing of “this great Genius which is worth knowing—nothing which might inform ... Read More PubDate: 2023-03-18T00:00:00-05:00
Abstract: The identification in 2019 of Milton’s markings in a copy of the 1623 First Folio of Shakespeare’s plays in the Free Library of Philadelphia, one of the great literary discoveries of our time, intensifies the irony for modern readers of Milton’s mocking reference in Eikonoklastes (1649) to Shakespeare as “one whom we well know was the Closet Companion of these [the king’s] solitudes.” Milton contends that his readers can find a model in Shakespeare’s Richard III (ca. 1592–93) for what he regards as the feigned piety of the Eikon Basilike (1649), the book of meditations and prayers supposedly composed by Charles I in the weeks before his execution. Milton’s example of how “the deepest policy of a Tyrant [is] to ... Read More PubDate: 2023-03-18T00:00:00-05:00
Abstract: My principal aim in this article is to show how attention to Early Modern English modal verbs may clarify Milton’s understanding of liberty, both human and divine, in a different way than less linguistically focused close readings can do. The keyword for this analysis is the surprisingly complex auxiliary verb concerned with possibility, may, construed in interplay with its rival can. Milton’s contemporary John Wilkins makes the connection between liberty and may in this way: “The Liberty of a thing, depends upon a freedom from all Obstacles either within or without, and is usually expressed in our Language . . . by the particle MAY.”1 My treatment of may and related modal verbs in Milton falls into four ... Read More PubDate: 2023-03-18T00:00:00-05:00
Abstract: In 1878, an excerpt in an English newspaper published in Shanghai compared William Shakespeare to “a majestic river” and John Milton “in his sublimity” to “the Alpine mountain, soaring upwards to the sky.”1 It is interesting that Milton is associated with a specific European landscape, while Shakespeare sounds more universal: “a majestic river” can be found in many parts of the world. As the most prominent English writers, Shakespeare and Milton have had a significant impact on modern Chinese literature and culture since the 1830s. Drawing on the abundant materials made newly available in Chinese and English databases, this essay attempts to survey and reevaluate the two literary masters’ specific influence upon ... Read More PubDate: 2023-03-18T00:00:00-05:00
Abstract: Thanks to widespread media attention, mainly but not exclusively in the anglophone world, everyone knows or else should know that what seems to be John Milton’s copy of Shakespeare’s First Folio has recently been discovered. It is difficult to imagine, realistically, a more fundamental addition to our material knowledge of English literature. Although a great deal is known and plausibly surmised about what Milton read and even the chronology of his reading, only eight actual books (comprising ten titles) identified as having belonged to or been used by him have been previously discovered. None of them, except for his family Bible (King James Version), is in English. None of them, furthermore, was originally ... Read More PubDate: 2023-03-18T00:00:00-05:00
Abstract: September 9, 2019 was a slow news day. In Europe, Boris Johnson flew to Dublin “to show that his Brexit plan remains on track,” as the Guardian reported, while in the United States, according to the New York Times, Donald Trump did . . . well, something.1 For Miltonists, however, the day was less predictable and more exciting. A blogpost from Cambridge University’s Centre for Material Texts tantalizingly wondered: “Milton’s Shakespeare'”2 And you know the rest. Within a week, major news outlets had run stories about Claire Bourne and Jason Scott-Warren’s long-distance collaboration resulting in the identification of the Shakespeare First Folio at the Philadelphia Free Library as John Milton’s well marked-up copy. ... Read More PubDate: 2023-03-18T00:00:00-05:00
Abstract: Milton’s copy of Shakespeare’s First Folio slumbered innocently and without undue attention for almost eighty years in the lovely Philadelphia Free Library. Its ownership was only identified in 2019 through an astonishing series of events that began when an American scholar, Claire Bourne, published an essay describing and analyzing in detail the annotations in the folio. In England, Jason Scott-Warren, who had an essay in the same collection as Bourne’s piece, read Bourne’s paper and linked her descriptions of the method of editorial intervention and her samples from the handwriting to Milton.1 He posted his observations online, where they were seen by a wide range of scholars around the world. Where Bourne and ... Read More PubDate: 2023-03-18T00:00:00-05:00
Abstract: Stretching back over half a century, both Milton’s poetry and prose are full of echoes and allusions to Shakespeare. Even in a text like his 1642 Apology against a Pamphlet in which Milton wants to distance himself from the seamier aspects of the London theater world, he imagines himself as Hamlet. He represents his Polonius-like adversary, the Modest Confuter, crying out “from behind the Arras” to interrupt him in his debate with Bishop Hall, and so in his vehemence skewers him with a tart response.1 By 1642 Shakespeare’s fame was such that he was not just another poet or playwright. Indeed, by the 1640s, according to Heidi Craig, “Shakespeare was the most-printed and most-reprinted dramatist of the preceding ... Read More PubDate: 2023-03-18T00:00:00-05:00
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